It actually works!

I've had this blog for six years now. Finally it's paying off!

I don't remember exactly when I added Google ads. I know I put them on at one point and then removed them and decided to try putting them back again. I don't know if I ever really expected to see any return on them.

But low and behold, yesterday a check arrived in the mail from Google for $104! That's really impressive considering I hardly write on the blog anymore.

This could be yet another incentive to keep writing. Google doesn't pay you until you're earnings reach the $100 level. Hopefully it won't take another six years to get another check.

So thanks, everyone, for the clicks.  I'll keep writing if you keep clicking.

Privacy, shmivacy

Worried too much of your personal information is out there? Cringe when you see your house on Google Earth or your front yard on Google Maps street view? The Onion reports the search giant has a solution for you...


New Google Service Lets Privacy Critics Opt-Out, Relocate To Remote Village

Watch the video a second time and make sure to pay attention to the headlines scrolling across the bottom. Among the highlights:

• Obama to slip universal health care into iTunes user agreement
• Survey: 8 out of 10 Americans want scientists to say beer is healthy
• New product from makers of 'Breath Right' nasal strips can be applied to penis for faster urination
  

April Fool's!

It's April Fool's Day, which means the folks who brought us the Rickroll are at it again. If you try to view a video from YouTube's homepage you'll be in for a surprise -- many elements on the page are upside down and/or backwards.

I found the "Tips for viewing the new layout" particurlay helpful.

The Google folks are having fun in other places too, as they often do on April 1st. For examlpe, check out their new "Autopilot" feature for Gmail.

Happy birthday, Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss would have turned 105 years old today. Check the revised Google logo posted on their home page in his honor.

BTW, my favorite was "Green Eggs and Ham." What was yours?

Chrome wasn't built in a day

I’ve been test driving Google’s web browser, Chrome, since it was released a few months ago. I like it, but there are a few things keeping me from making it my full-time browser…

The problems with the mouse wheel are really annoying. You can use the wheel to scroll down on a page, but it’s kind of jumpy. You cannot scroll back up. And you can’t click the wheel and then scroll by moving the mouse – that’s a feature I like a lot that’s available in just about any other product made for Windows.  (UPDATE: I just installed the latest version of Chrome on my computer at work and scrolling by rolling the mouse wheel now works fine.  I'll have to upgrade at home.  But you still can't click the wheel.)

Perhaps my biggest issue is the fact that there are certain sites I use for work that only work in IE. I use Firefox at home and have an add-on called IE Tab that will allow me to run those sites in IE from within the Firefox browser (thanks for turning me on to that one, Mike). However, I have not been able to find any such add-on for Chrome. This is a must-have for me.

Lastly, this one is a nitpick, but my favicon on this blog doesn’t show up in Chrome. It works in IE, Firefox and Safari. But in Chrome I just get the orange Blogger “B.” I see other sites’favicons fine, just not my own. What gives?

Does anyone else who has played with Chrome have any suggestions for getting around these issues?

Adding to my wish list

Add the Google-powered G1 phone to the very long list of tech gadgets I wish I had.

The barcode scanner app demonstrated in this video is one of the coolest things ever!

The view from the street

It was brought to my attention today the Albany area has been added to Google Maps street-level views.

This might be old news, but I just found out today. The last I knew it was only major cities that had this feature available.

Anyway, there's our place. The house number it shows up under is way off, but it's there (a disclaimer notes that "addresses are approximate"). It looks like they took the pictures over the summer. I'm glad my lawn was mowed!

Top 2006 search terms

So what do people care about? According to Google Zeitgeist, here are Google’s most searched terms for 2006. Draw from this whatever social commentary you wish…

Google.com
1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki

Google News
1. paris hilton
2. orlando bloom
3. cancer
4. podcasting
5. hurricane katrina
6. bankruptcy
7. martina hingis
8. autism
9. 2006 nfl draft
10. celebrity big brother 2006

'The Google'

It's always interesting to ask a president (of either party) if they know the price of a gallon of milk and see how they answer (I think that was part of a "West Wing" episode once).

Yesterday, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo interviewed President Bush and asked him the 21st century equivalent of that question: "Do you ever use Google?" Here's his answer:

"Occasionally. One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps... I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite, like I kind of like to look at the ranch... reminds me of where I want to be sometimes."

As I've mentioned before, I also use the Google for many of my needs on the Internets.

Google World

Google is slowly taking over my life. As you can see, I use Blogger (a Google product) to run this site. I use Gmail for my primary, non-work e-mail. I keep track of my schedule on Google Calendar. I have a Google personalized homepage. And I'm completely addicted to keeping track of all of my feeds on Google Reader.

Granted, I prefer YouTube to Google Video.

So what portion of my life will Google insidiously weave it's way into next?

New widget

You may have noticed the box on the right side of this blog labeled “Things That Caught My Eye.” Here’s where that came from…

I had been using Pluck as my RSS reader. However, I recently switched to Google Reader.

Both readers have their pros and cons. But one of the nice things about Google Reader is that it can generate a little customizable piece of code I can drop into my blog. Now with a single click I can send headlines from Google Reader to this space.

Sometimes I stumble across interesting articles, but I don’t have the time to write something up to provide a link with. This will make it easier to share some of the items I find interesting with all of my loyal readers.